“You’re still going to think about [9/11] whether you’re up there or down here, but if you’re up there, you can have a feeling of power over what happened,” she said.

Others were more reticent.

“Just walking by [the site] every day is hard for me,” said Andrea Peart, 46, of The Bronx, who has worked across the street from Ground Zero since before 9/11 and admitted that she wouldn’t go up to the observation deck. “The trauma is very real.”

“I was actually outside before the second plane hit. I saw people running, on the ground, bleeding.”

The projected $62 million deck is due to open in 2015, a year after tenants start moving into 1 WTC.

Unlike the Twin Towers’ observatory, which topped the WTC’s Tower 2 before 9/11, the new attraction will not include an outdoor deck because of infrastructure needed to support the antennas being installed above it.